


A job, and a little something more.

by StarlingGirl



Category: Fringe (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pining, Retrospective, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 03:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18438287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlingGirl/pseuds/StarlingGirl
Summary: It’s like this: if everything had been a different place, a different time - but it wasn’t. It’s here and it’s now and he’s got a wife that he loves and a best friend that he trusts, and they deserve more than him ruining any of that.He’ll always love Olivia, he thinks, but not at the cost of loving Sonia.He has Olivia's back. It’s his job, and a little something more.





	A job, and a little something more.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a wandering exploration of my view on Charlie and Olivia's relationship in canon. Gearing myself up to write some actual ship-fic.

Charlie meets Sonia at a party he wishes he wasn’t at.

It’s a housewarming thing, a buddy from work and his girl, and it’s not for nothing that Charlie is one of the department’s lead investigators: there’ll be a ring pulled out before the evening is over. And that’s nice, that’s good, it’s always great to see a little love in the world. But he’s surrounded by civilians he doesn’t know, all bright, unbuttoned shirts and floral dresses and middle class laughter, and he’s ended up with a glass of champagne he doesn’t really like. More of a beer guy.

So he stands and he watches, because he’s good at that, and he figures who are the married couples and who are the just-together couples and who are the not-couples-yet couples, and wonders idly if there’s snacks, somewhere.

“Saving that for later, huh?”

She appears by his side without any warning, head tipping towards the still-full glass, held loosely between his fingers, warm now. He quirks out his polite smile, straightens from where he’s leaned against the wall, tips his head.

“If by ‘later’ you mean ‘never’? Sure.”

“Here,” she says, with a laugh, and plucks it from unresisting fingers, and pulls him to one side a little to shield her from view as she tips the champagne into the soil of a houseplant, a giant leafy thing that’s bordering on tropical.

“Resourceful,” he observes, when she takes one last furtive glance around and hands him back the empty glass, grinning.

  
“Oh, I’ve been to my fair share of these things,” she tells him. “You learn to get by.”

They _get by_ in their little corner for an hour before his buddy drops to one knee, and when the celebratory champagne comes around, she covers the top of his glass and says with syrup in her voice and mirth in her eyes, _not for you honey, you’re driving_ , and he’s so stupidly grateful that it’d be rude not to take her out for a drink sometime, a _real_ drink, to prove it.

* * *

Charlie meets Olivia during a crisis briefing.

Perhaps it would be more apt to say that Olivia meets _him_. It’s her first week on the job, it will turn out later, but he doesn’t guess it right away. She strides through the door already talking, latest intel clutched in one hand and raised as a focal point.

“ - at least four hostages, and possibly as many as ten. Chatter on the street says this our guys, so they’re heavily armed, and they’re smart. You and you, I want building blueprints and layouts in the next two minutes. Someone find out which alarm company they use, get them on the phone. I want it all shut down.”

There’s a moment of something that’s as close to silence as a crisis centre can get, before Charlie breaks it.

“You heard the agent! We don’t have time to hang around, let’s get this moving.”

Later, she’s crouched in a parking garage with a gun in her hand and her vest strapped on and the slight edges of panic creeping in around her eyes as they dart around, looking for something. An exit. A way out. All of her earlier confidence has drained from her. It’s then that he realises that she hasn’t done this before, not really. Not in the real world.

“Dunham.” His voice is low but firm, and she half-starts as she turns to meet his eyes. He holds them for a moment, steady. “You’re gonna be fine.” Her shoulders relax, just a fraction. It’s enough.

And later still, when there’s brick dust and sweat sticking to their skin but not blood, no blood, she pushes a few loose strands of hair back from her face and hands him this smile, not exactly careful but maybe a little tentative.

“Hey, I just wanted to say - thank you.”

“Thank you?” He repeats, holstering his gun and fighting the urge to double over and clear his throat. There’s no escaping the rapid blinking against the sting in his eyes, brows drawn low and moisture gathering in their corners.

“For having my back,” she says, and at least she’s got watering eyes, too.

“That’s my job, agent Dunham. You’d do the same.”

“Olivia,” she says decisively, and just like that, they’re friends.

A couple of years later she says to him in a bar _I always knew I was gonna like you, because you didn’t say ‘you heard the lady’._

* * *

He and Sonia have been dating four months. Nothing all that serious, but he likes her, he does. She’s funny in a dry sort of way and she doesn’t fuss over the dangers of his job overmuch. She likes to drink beer and tease him good-naturedly and cook for him, even though she’s terrible at timings and more than once they’ve ended up with all the sides on the table but no meat.

(“Hey,” he tells her, with a sideways smile and already serving barbecued corn and potato onto her plate, sans pork chop as she laughingly despairs. “I always save the best bit for last, anyway.”)

Charlie’s pretty sure she’s too good for him, and when he tells his mom that, over the phone, she laughs something like pride down the line. “Then you’d better treat her right, Charlie,” she says, even though she definitely doesn’t believe it. “When are you bringing her round, anyway?”

In the end, Olivia meets his mom before Sonia, and there’s just about as many awkward misunderstandings as you’d expect. But Olivia only ducks her head a little, tucks a smile against her teeth as Charlie explains, no, mom, we work together, let’s not head down this thoroughly embarrassing road.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Olivia says, hands in her pockets against the chill, out here on the doorstep, “I could go for embarrassing you a little, Charlie.”

His mom laughs, and Charlie pulls out a look that says _you’re all beneath me_ , but he still lets himself be bundled through the door for a cup of coffee. Draws the line at the family photos, though, and something itches beneath his skin that this all feels so intimate. That it feels kind of right.

* * *

Charlie is not blind.

Far from it; he didn’t get to where he is by pure dumb luck. So when Olivia and John first start seeing each other - secret little dates, dinners - he knows. He knows and he doesn’t say a damn thing because Olivia is his friend and he knows her well enough to know that she’ll apply for a transfer herself if there’s any real risk to this.

She doesn’t, and life goes on, and Charlie’s happy for her. He’s happy for himself, too, because one morning he’s lying in bed and he says to Sonia, in his arms, _hey, do I need to throw an awkward house party and buy in the champagne if I want to marry you_? and she rolls straight over and stares at him with wide eyes and a disbelieving smile before he quirks a brow and tips his head. She’s covering his face with kisses before she ever actually gives him an answer, but he knows it’s a yes.

They go ring shopping that afternoon, when they eventually make it out of bed, and Olivia’s the first one that Charlie tells.

* * *

It’s not fair, the hand that life deals Olivia Dunham. She can count cards all she likes, but sometimes the house just doesn’t play fair, and Charlie is devastated that everything she deserved has been pried away from her.

_I wasn’t going to tell you this, but he told me he loved me too._

It’s worth it to see that smile, watery as it is. She’s not the hugging type, but she hugs him, and all he can do is fold her into his arms and think _if things had been different,_ and then tuck that thought away, deep.

He’s an honest man, so when he’s on the couch, leaned up against the arm with Sonia tucked against his chest, between his legs, it’s always hard not to tell her everything he’s not allowed. This time, though, it’s not his job that’s keeping him from doing it, and he feels a little guilt at that. It’s the first and only time it’s ever really felt like he’s lying to her.

He does his best to bury it with the rest.

It’s like this: if everything had been a different place, a different time - but it wasn’t. It’s here and it’s now and he’s got a wife that he loves and a best friend that he trusts, and they deserve more than him ruining any of that.

He’ll always love Olivia, he thinks, but not at the cost of loving Sonia.

       He has Olivia’s back. It’s his job, and a little something more.  



End file.
